Tazewell County, Virginia

Tazewell County was created on December 20, 1799 from portions of Wythe
and Russell Counties.

Prior to 1748, this area was home to the Cherokee. A few white hunters
had come to that territory earlier in quest of furs to send to Europe.
One of these hunters was William Clinch. His name is attached to the
great valley and beautiful river that has its resource in Tazewell
County.

In 1748, James Patton, a retired officer in the British navy, and John
Buchanan, Patton's son-in-law and a skilled surveyor, led an expedition
into western Virginia to identify and lay out tracts of land for
settlements. By the time they reached the Clinch Valley, it was late
fall, so they decided to suspend surveying and return the following year.
After cooking their breakfast, a man named James Burke, who was with the
party as an axman or chain-carrier, cleared away the place where the fire
had been made and planted a lot of potato peelings, covering them lightly
with brush. The following year, Patton and Buchanan returned and found a
large bed of potatoes. They called the place Burke's Garden.
Source: "History of Tazewell County," by William Pendleton as published in
"Family Newsletter," by and for the descendants of Jefferson Davis
Jamison and Nancy Loucinda Peery, Vol. 1, No. 4, Summer 1995, p. 17.